Are talktalk really that bad?

robotrobo

cherrykerry wrote: »

I popped to asda yesterday afternoon and got talking to the talktalk rep that was outside the store. I currently have my line rental and broadband through sky and pay £27.40 a month. Talktalk offered me 18 months free broadband and I just have to pay the £17.70 line rental. I agreed and signed the contract but when I got home I looked at some reviews online and see a lot of complaints. Are they really that bad? I don't get any calls included but we rarely use the landline so that doesn't bother me. We use the broadband (just me and hubby) for surfing the Web and watching TV programmes online. Some of the reviews said connection was bad. Have I made a mistake? I should still be ok to cancel but I wanted to see other people's opinions first

When we moved house i did everything by the talktalk terms, it was a nightmare from then on , the phone was still connected for weeks, and i tthink it turned in to months before we were finally sorted & hours & hours on the phone to them, i was pulling my hair out , getting passed from pillar to post, since then 9 years ago we have had no problems.
They eventually said the problem was that our post code was wrong!, no wonder with all the foreign commmunication that was going on , i had a job to understand what anyone was saying, to say i was unhappy :mad:

duchy

I work for one of the aforementioned companies but my contract says I can't say which one on-line )

I often to get the horror stories from customers about their previous providers and some definitely feature more often than others- I've come to the conclusion when everything works it doesn't matter who you are with but when it goes wrong it really does sort out the men from the boys and certain companies have less interest than others in putting things right.

jenniewb

joe134 wrote: »

BUT;;No TT YET.?

No TT meaning no talktalk?>


Yes, I was with TT stupidly for a number of years (about 7?) before O2. I left TT to move to O2, it felt like a kids Christmas every day compared to every week my BB failing with TT and every time I called I would go crazy trying to get the problem sorted! I think I had 3 internet cuts over the year I was with O2 and each time it was swiftly dealt with and I was refunded on the loss of service. I think TT offered to refund once.


I got so fed up with speaking to the customer services at TT who would pass me from person to person and then mysteriously hang up or just talk incoherently at me that I stopped asking for refunds let alone compensation for the nightmare I'd have to go through to just get them to take on the connection failures!

ricardinho88

I would advise anyone to avoid Talk Talk like the plague.

When everything is working, everything is gravy. It's when problems occur that TT show their utter incompetence.

The call centre staff are clearly reading from a script, and they can't deal with any deviation from the script. Each person you speak to seems to have access to a different system than the others, resulting in a transfer to another agent because they can't answer your questions.

I've had some quite serious problems with them including:

Lack of data protection checks - I'm not the account holder (my partner is), but I've called in many times and accessed her information without any DP questions from the agents.
Agents hanging up - This happened often. They either put you on hold for ages then intentionally drop the line if you refuse to end the call, or they simply hang up on you if they don't like the idea of having to deal with your problem
Generally Incompetent staff - The staff are absolutely awful. I called them because I was paying for a fibre package but wasn't recieving fibre speeds. I suspected they were throttling my line speed (I'm quite a heavy user), but of course the agent had no idea what that actually was, and then when I explained it to him, he then denied ISP's do that to their customer's (they really do). And the worst of all? They're liars. I was going to leave so I got through to the only english person I've ever spoken to (I've been with them 3+ years). She was very cheery and accomodating as you'd expect, and she said that my service had been cancelled and that I'd recieve my final bill shortly. Well my final bill never arrived, and I soon recieved a letter from a debt collector and a default has been placed on my partners credit file!

So here's my advice: please PLEASE don't get lured in by their cheap prices. They are a cheap for a reason. It is by far the worst company I've ever had the misfortune in dealing with.

Oblivion

... and now of course we've got the fiasco of a major personal data breach at TalkTalk. I doubt this company's administration could get much worse if it tried.

KxMx

We have a good speed on standard BB, even very little drop in speed for wireless. The connection is very reliable.

However when we had an outage (no phone or BB) 2 years ago it was an utter nightmare trying to get it fixed. 10 day wait for engineer. We had to explain 1000 times when complaining about the length of wait, over and over. Once they grasped the issue and realised they'd booked the wrong type of engineer (we needed OR), it was attended to and fixed within 24 hours.

It was a worn out cable up the pole.

Catslovelycats

I've been with TT for about 18 years. I've never had a problem and they have always been the cheapest broadband, line rental and phone calls provider for me. And problem-free includes moving house.
They are still the cheapest for me now.
I have several friends and family who have nothing but trouble with BT.
I just have to decide whether I want to pay more to have greater data security from now on, given that that particular TT horse has already bolted and that whoever my ISP is in the future, I can't undo the fact that my TT data has quite possibly already been hacked.

iltisman

I wonder if the talktalk rep that appears on here has an alternative MSE name?

joe134

catslovelycats wrote: »

I've been with TT for about 18 years. I've never had a problem and they have always been the cheapest broadband, line rental and phone calls provider for me. And problem-free includes moving house.
They are still the cheapest for me now.
I have several friends and family who have nothing but trouble with BT.
I just have to decide whether I want to pay more to have greater data security from now on, given that that particular TT horse has already bolted and that whoever my ISP is in the future, I can't undo the fact that my TT data has quite possibly already been hacked.

Ditto;;
I'm not happy with the rise though, am hoping to use the Fiasco, as a bargaining tool to get a better retention dealthan offered,,OR, it looks like Sky, for 12 months, then back to TT.
I don't want to move, even after this Fiasco, as you say, damage is done, just limitation now.:beer:

earlywormgetsthebird

Are TT really that bad?

Yes. They are terrible. A relation of mine, repeatedly phoned and wrote to them to notify moving house, and so also the end of service with them (*not* move of house and TT at the new address!). Again and again, this was to no avail. Relation was eventually hounded with debt collection letters repeatedly. No matter how many times relation tried to tell them that he'd already given notice of leaving them, they continued to bill like nothing happened. This is by no means an uncommon occurence at Talk Talk. They are an utter disgrace and most persons on this thread have been far too neutral about them. I suspect this is because they've not had much dealings with their C(...lack of...)S!

Moral of story: Avoid TalkTalk.

PS: even if you choose to ignore the above advice, if any member of your family uses bittorrent, giving them TT is like giving them two left feet, and then expecting them to be happy. Look up "TT + throttling internet connection" for more. HTH

PPS ricardinho88 is absolutely right.